The Divergent Movie Is Social Commentary for Simpletons

Image courtesy Summit Entertainment

It was telling—inevitable, really—that BuzzFeed recently made a quiz that allows you to determine what Divergent faction you belong in. Divergent has always been the BuzzFeed quiz of young adult fiction, a YA story set in a dystopian Chicago that sorts its citizens into color-coded groups based on whether someone is kind (Amity), honest (Candor), intellectual (Erudite), generous (Abnegation) or brave (Dauntless).

When the time comes for our young protagonist Tris (played in the film by Shailene Woodley) to choose her faction, her aptitude test reveals that she doesn’t fit neatly into any of the categories, but rather shows aptitude for more than one, making her divergent. She’s told, by a sympathetic test administrator, to hide the fact that she’s different because people will try to kill her if they find out she’s not like everybody else, and if you think you see where Divergent is going with this, you’re probably right.

It’s not clear why divergents are threats to this world’s system, they just … are. The point, as the hammer of the movie bangs into our heads over and over, is that society says conformity is good, but it really isn’t! Then, just in case you missed the point, Evil Kate Winslet—who plays Erudite representative Jeanine Matthews—gives a speech where she literally says that nonconformity is a threat to peace and that people who are different are bad. It’s like a metaphor, but with the metaphor removed.

And yes, all of this talk of “factions” and “divergents” is stupid; but it’s also kind of fun in the same way online quizzes are stupid and fun: They allow us to imagine that the world breaks down into neat, compact boxes and that we belong in one of them. There’s an appeal to the idea of being known, understood, and categorized. Our obsession with online quizzes comes not from narcissism but from anxiety, a way of displacing our fears about where or whether we fit in.

Although the story ostensibly sets out to debunk the idea of this simplistic social sorting, much of its appeal still lies in that concept. After all, what makes Dauntless—the warrior faction Tris joins—so interesting and appealing is the fact that they set themselves apart as the rebellious cool kids; they’re exciting and dangerous, because they buy into the idea that they’re exciting and dangerous. When we find ourselves enjoying it, to some degree we’re buying in too.

Veronica Roth. Photo: Alex Washburn/WIRED

Veronica Roth was famously young when she when wrote the novel that serves as the movie’s source material, only 22 years old and a senior in college. It shows. The cultural narrative of the young phenom is a compelling one, but it can also be a lot of weight to put on shoulders that may not be ready to bear it. Roth’s book isn’t The Hunger Games, and the plethora of comparisons being made about the two is making Divergent‘s weaknesses all the more apparent. Sure, the choose-your-flavor cultural concept of Divergent is fun at first glance, but unlike Panem’s critique of economic inequality and societal power, there’s not much behind it; think about how the faction system works for too long, and it starts to fall apart. (Imagine the Council of Vocations in Ayn Rand’s Anthem, but with social commentary about an inch deep.)

That’s exactly what happens as the book series progresses and closer examination of what’s beneath the hood of Divergent leads to less and less satisfying answers. You could argue that this is simply proof of the story’s commentary about the irreducibility of the human spirit, but its strawman approach to world-building proves little.

That’s not to say that Roth won’t go on to make many books of quality; there’s imagination and promise in her work, but ultimately it’s just that: promise, not skill. It is better, and fairer, perhaps, to view Divergent as her juvenilia, rather than hanging the mantle of The Hunger Games on shoulders too thin to carry it.

At two-and-a-half hours, the movie version of Roth’s work is fairly long—and it doesn’t earn its size, nor does it make the most of it. In its desire to be faithful to the book, it ends up doing too much, too insubstantially. Several of the most defining relationships and losses for Tris end up feeling rote; without her inner monologue to anchor the emotional significance, pivotal turning points feel mechanical rather than moving. Dead loved one to inspire crying and motivation? Yep. Strong emotional connection between protagonist and said loved one established prior to their untimely demise? Not so much.

The unfortunate miscasting of Woodley as Tris certainly doesn’t help matters. Woodley is a fine actor, but while she perfectly captures the institutional shyness of Abnegation, she never believably transforms into the fierce, powerful Dauntless persona. Although we’re told Tris has to fit in perfectly at Dauntless lest people find out she’s divergent, if anyone were making a list of the people that might not belong in Dauntless, she’d be at the very top. Many viewers may end up feeling less like Four (Theo James), the romantic interest who believes in Tris, and more like her sadistic instructor Eric (Jai Courtney): unsure why this girl is here in the first place, and completely unconvinced that she can hack it. Even her biggest moments of rebellion feel whispery rather than steely—and ultimately so does Tris.

This failure is a pretty fundamental problem, because if you don’t buy her as a member of Dauntless that means you don’t actually believe that she’s divergent. She fundamentally does not seem to contain the multiple elements that set her apart, and the performance does a better job of affirming the category system than debunking it. Tris doesn’t seem like a rich tapestry of multiple qualities; she seems like someone out of her element, trying on a skin that doesn’t fit—a member of Abnegation who strayed where she didn’t belong.

There’s an interesting story to be told about a society that breaks itself into groups based on interpersonal values, and about the Procrustean bed of social categories like gender, race and sexuality and how society tries to stretch or cut us to fit them. Divergent just isn’t that story. It’s the equivalent of a dystopian sorting hat that resolves into a trite statement about how each and every one of us is a special and unique snowflake. From that perspective, it’s easy to understand why the story has been so popular: It’s the fantasy both of the teenager who desperately wants to belong, and the teenager who desperately wants to be different; it wants too badly to have it both ways.